Gaz, Taster of PTSD
by SaintHeartwing
Summary: A birthday gift for Zim's Most Loyal Servant. It's the anniversary of the time when Gaz was cursed with only being able to taste pork, and it's memory is coming back to haunt her. How is she going to cope? Well...badly...unless Dib can somehow get through to her. Enjoy!


Dib had no idea how long Gaz was going to be like this, but he wasn't exactly happy his sister had been sent to the insane asylum instead of him. He knew it was, on some level, ironic. She'd made fun of him being almost sent for years and now it was HER who was going crazy.

And it had all happened a little while after a particularly strange incident. Just a month ago, Gaz had a spell cast on her courtesy of Dib, who hadn't truly realized the impact of the spell. A spell that allowed you to only taste pork.

Now, granted, that might not sound so bad. After all, you could still eat stuff like ham, or bacon, or hot dogs, but still, a lifetime of tasting nothing but pig products was horrifying to Gazlene Membrane. Science had failed her, her father the famous Professor Membrane, had sought to cure her by keeping her at his lab and studying her to try and see if he could get her to taste other things by fiddling around with her taste buds!

But nothing doing. As the saying went, "magic must defeat magic"! Try as Professor Membrane might, he couldn't fix her, and so Dib had to break her out of the lab and race off somewhere safe and out of the way where he could call upon the spellbook he'd used to cast the spell to begin with…and take them both to the PIGGY DIMENSION.

There laid the Pig Demon who would undo her "gift", as he put it. In exchange for…

Well, all Gaz had to do was hang out with him a bit. Do a little dance, have some nice tea, chat…but poor Dib had to clean the toilet of unbelievably disgusting piggy filth. And when a PIG asks you to clean up it's crap, boy howdy…

Needless to say, despite Dib coming home smelling like literal shit and everyone giving him a fifty foot berth for the next three days as he kept washing his body continuously and overdoing the "Axe Body Spray", it wasn't Dib who was suffering.

No, as it turned out…

It was Gaz.

"AAAAARRGGGH!"

THWUMP!

Gaz fell out of bed, her bedsheets soaked, sweating up a storm as Dib raced into her room, her father standing behind him as they looked at Gaz. She was even paler than usual, her purple hair an absolute mess, golden/brown eyes wide and mouth agape as she felt over her frame. "Phew. Phew. Not…not there. I'm here. I'm here."

"We heard you screaming, what happened?" Dib asked, putting his glasses back on, blinking at his sister, scythe-like black hair frizzled up as his tall, goggles-wearing father adjusted the thick goggles he had on his head.

"I…it was just a bad dream." Gaz muttered. "Not a big deal. Really." She insisted as Dib sniffed at the air.

"Uh, Gaz, I think it was."

"Why's THAT?" She wanted to know, frowning angrily at him.

"…because you were so scared you wet the bed." Dib sheepishly murmured as Gaz whipped her head back in the direction of her bed, mouth agape before, a moment later…

THWUMP. Poor Dib got buried underneath the blanket she'd tossed, howling as he writhed around, Gaz taking off with her pillow and storming downstairs. "I'm going to SLEEP ON THE COUCH. And NOBODY better talk to me about what just happened in the morning!" She roared out loud as her father sighed, shaking his head back and forth as he helped his son out of the blankets.

"My, my, Gazlene's never done anything like this before. My poor daughter."

"It must have been really bad if she wet the bed…" Dib murmured. What could be bothering her?

The next day, Gaz was barely awake. She hadn't slept well in her own bed and being on the couch hadn't helped. Her eyelids fluttered, barely able to stay open as she sat in her chair, looking across the way at her teacher, Mr. Elliot, who was talking about how crops grew. She found it endlessly boring. Most of school was endlessly boring.

Boring…

…boring…

…bor…ing…

…zzzzzzzzzzzzz…

"Gaz, pay attention!"

Gaz awoke, finding herself back in her father's lab, stuck behind a big glass cage, and she was currently strapped to a table! Her father had pulled out her tongue and was examining it under a microscope yet again as he shook his head back and forth, glancing behind him at a bevy of other scientists. 'Try as I might, I just can't seem to find the answer to WHY my daughter can only taste pork! Still, science has a solution even to this. If I can't find out why, then it doesn't matter. I can fix my daughter by simply giving her a new tongue!" He proclaimed as he pointed dramatically upward, Gaz looking at him, eyes bulging wide as Dib, watching from the other scientists, emerged with a large table of things like scalpels, tweezers, laser cutters, even a hacksaw.

"So her tongue'll have to come out?" He inquired as he put on a big, white surgical mask/face shield and some goggles to boot as his father nodded, adjusting the black gloves he wore.

"Yes. And since we can't just YANK it out, it'll have to be in LITTLE BITS. Get me the scissors!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Gazlene fell out of her chair, flailing around, arms and legs lashing about. "No, no! Get away from me, don't cut my tongue out, don't cut my tongue out, I don't care if I can only eat hot dogs, NO NO NO-"

Then she realized where she actually was as she stopped, all of her classmates staring at her, looking down at her with a mixture of pity, revulsion and confusion as her teacher's mouth hung open. Gaz felt her cheeks burn as she gulped, looking around the room. The entire class must think she was out of her mind. She was SURE she could see the faintest edge of a smile dancing on people's lips.

"I'm…uh…I'm gonna go to the Nurse's Office, Mr. Elliot." She said quickly, barreling out the door to the classroom as Mr. Elliot hesitated, but then just decided not to press matters, and to just let her bolt on out…

There wasn't anything he could do for her. Perhaps nothing ANYONE could do for Gazlene Membrane.

…

…

…

…she'd spent almost the entire morning in the nurse's office, saying she had to come in because of…shudder…a "panic attack". She couldn't believe she'd admitted it. Luckily, the school was beginning to start the SAT testing. It made people do crazy things, so the teacher had bought the excuse.

"In fact, before I took the SATs, I looked like this." The nurse said, the bun-haired-having, slightly wrinkly middle aged woman remarked as she held up a photo from her wallet.

Gaz gaped. Holy shit, she looked like she could have been in pictures. Damn. She wasn't into women before, but now she was kinda into women.

"At any rate, maybe you should get yourself a little lunch now, see how you feel with some food in your belly." The nurse had suggested as she took the photograph back, and Gaz had gone off to the cafeteria to get tacos. It was, after all, Taco Tuuuuesday, Taco Tuuuuuesday! She LOVED her tacos.

And yet when she sat down next to Dib, giving him a "NO I do not want to talk about last night or this morning" look that instantly silenced whatever was building up in him, she had a gut feeling something was off. Why was that? Maybe because…yeah, today was the anniversary of the day that dumb pork curse had been. Ugh. Stupid curse.

Gaz took a bite of the taco and-

She spat it out. BLAUGH. She cringed, panting, sweat beads popping out on her forehead, rubbing over her throat before she sniffed the taco. Wait, it was…

A PORK taco?! A…A PORK…TACO?!

She shoved the taco away from her. Something, anything else! Not pork! No more pork! The milk! The milk, she opened up her milk carton and began to glug it down-

PFFFFFT!

No good. She could only taste pork, that aftertaste from the taco was infecting her tastebuds and she cringed, shaking her head back and forth, gagging, clawing at her tongue. "BLAURGHK. YAAAGGGGH! Why is it always goddamn pork?!" She moaned aloud as Dib and other children stared at her, people now beginning to whisper and murmur at the sight before them. Something was very wrong with Gazlene Membrane and the whole school was picking up on it.

"I'm going OUT to lunch." She announced loudly as Dib watched her leave, a look of concern on his face as his sister barreled out the door. What was going on?

Gaz made her way out of the front doors of the school, shoving a few teachers aside as she walked into the "MacMeaties" right across the way. "I want your most meaty MacMeaty burger." She insisted, slapping down some dollar bills on the counter as the man behind it looked Gaz over. "And a milkshake."

"Sorry, the machine's broken."

"Course it is. It always is. Fine, bottled f—kin' water then." She grunted as the man smiled and went to get her the meal she wanted as people mumbled behind her in the restaurant. Shouldn't she be in school at this hour? Gaz gave them a dark glare before turning back to the counter, the man setting down her meal on a big tray as she took it, then plopped down at a booth, ripping open the MacMeaty Super Deluxe Royale with Cheese and began to chew.

"PFFFOUGH!" She spat out the burger she'd bitten off, looking disgusted. "What in the hell?!" She muttered. "Did you guys decide to switch to pork products?!" She asked.

"No, it's all natural beef. With a hint of napkins. Like always." The man behind the counter remarked cheerily as Gaz tried to wash the taste of pork out with the bottled water-

"PPPSSSSHHHH! Oh no! No no no no no no no!" Gaz cried out, looking at the bottled water, her eyes going wide with horror. There was no other way to look at it. She'd been cursed once more! She could only taste pork all over again! How in the Hell had this happened?! She'd not only forced Dib to get rid of that stupid spellbook from before, she'd had him EAT the page that had the pork curse on it!

"NOOOOO!" She howled, barreling out the door, racing off for her house as people stared around at each other, looking stupidly at themselves, then at her left-behind meal.

"…well, if she ain't gonna eat it…" A dirty hobo remarked, plopping his rump down onto the table and beginning to munch away. "Mmmm. They're chewy!"

Poor Gaz was soon holed up inside of her room, miserably curled up on her bed, groaning and moaning, shaking her head back and forth. She laid there for hours, the sun beginning to slowly set as a knock finally came at her door.

"Gaz? Can you turn off your room security so I can come in?"

"I had to get rid of the guard gummy bears that feed on human flesh, come on in."

"Oh?" Dib walked on inside, looking surprised. "How come you got rid of them? I thought they were really effective. And painful. VERY painful." He added, rubbing over his side, cringing, remembering an incident three weeks back.

"I watched the "Five Nights at Freddy's" movie in my room and they watched along with me and got inspired on that weekend you went away on that science field trip. I spent the weekend trying to avoid them as they wandered the house, trying to chew my face off while singing "Toreador". I had to finally beat them individually to death with various household utensils in our child-safe kitchen." She grunted out. "I buried them in Keef's yard. Let's see how HE likes them."

Keef, down the street, nonchalantly smiled as he laid back on a chair, the psychotic and undead flesh-eating gummy bears currently giving him a back massage as he grinned. "Ohhh, yeaaah. A little to the left, Gladys." He intoned, adjusting the sunglasses he had on before he sipped on a nice Shirley Temple drink.

"So…lemme guess." Dib sighed as he adjusted his own glasses and walked up to Gaz on her bed. "You got the curse again? You KNOW the spellbook's gone. And I wouldn't cast it on you again, not after all the crud that happened last time."

"Yeah, you're dumb but not THAT dumb." Gaz mumbled. "You're not stupid enough to try it again knowing what I'd do to you. So how the hell did this happen?"

"Well…it IS the anniversary of the time it happened. Maybe you've got post traumatic stress disorder." Dib offered. "Think about it. You've got the incident on your mind and you're reliving it in your head and now your body's reacting to that, IT'S reliving it too."

Gaz cringed. "I'm NOT crazy!" She insisted, jolting up in her bed, shaking her head back and forth. "I'm not! I don't have any problems! That's just…stupid! I can get over this sort of thing. Mind over matter!" She smacked herself in the face. "I am not tasting pork! I am not tasting pork! It's all in my head."

"Gaz, just doing that isn't enough. You need to really talk about how you feel."

"Talking is for wimps." Gaz grunted, shaking her head back and forth as she headed out of her bedroom and down to the kitchen. "I can just WILL my way out of this. I'm gonna be fine." She proclaimed as she poured herself a glass of water, putting it to her lips before-

PPSSSSHHHH!

"BLAUGHK!" She moaned, sticking her tongue out of her mouth. "Damn it, anything ELSE wanna fuck me over today!?" She yelled, as she threw the glass through the air and it shattered against the wall, Gaz flopping down into a chair, slamming her head onto the kitchen table and moaning. "I hate this. I hate this. I hate this." She mumbled, bopping her head against the table over and over again.

"Gaz, seriously, just talk about how you feel. Think of it like…ripping off a bandaid. The sooner you do it the better." Dib suggested.

"I don't DO talking." She muttered. "I'll just wait until this dumb anniversary is over."

Dib sighed and shook his head. "Well…if you change your mind." He said, heading for his bedroom, and leaving Gaz alone in the kitchen.

Unfortunately…it didn't get better. The next few days continued to be hell. All she seemingly could taste was pork. People were whispering behind her back, conversations quickly halted whenever she got near. Folks murmured and muttered about her in the bathroom and before the teacher told the kids to settle down in class. Her nightmares were getting worse, she imagined she was constantly having tea with the Pork Demon, who kept trying to get her to indulge in his 'gift' by offering up plates of bacon, pork and ham!

Finally, at long last, she asked the question that had been plaguing her for so long.

"Wouldn't this make you a CANNIBAL if you're into eating pork yourself when you're a pig demon?" She wanted to know of the Pig Demon as he sat across from her in the nice, cozy little bedroom, the mighty master of the Pig Realm looking her over, his armored-gowned form sitting in a chair across from her. He chuckled a bit, adjusting the big, hooded armor piece that covered his upper body and neck and most of his head, save for his eyes and fatty pig nose.

"Why…yes!"

With that, he took it off, and revealed DOZENS of pig faces were all stitched together on his body, running up and down his back! "OINK OINK OINK!" They screeched and grunted and groaned as he showed off impossibly sharp fangs, and reached into a nearby bag, getting out pickled pigs feet. "Wanna bite?"

Gaz awoke with a screech, falling down off her bed, realizing an even WORSE smell now rose up from her pajamas as she moaned, slowly ambling her way to the bathroom to wash off. Oh geez, to think she'd actually…how degrading.

And then, at school…

It happened. She'd been sitting in the cafeteria, trying, in vain, EVERY single food item. She'd used up all the money in her wallet to buy every single piece of food she could, and was trying all of it, but everything, EVERYTHING just tasted like pork, and worst of all, despite showing and scrubbing hard, she still smelled awful. Kids were laughing and guffawing, teachers muttering under their breath, and then…

Then Torque Smacky had decided to play a mean joke. "Hey, I heard all you can taste is pork!" He laughed as he approached her with a smug grin on his face, Gaz giving him a glare as he held up a silver platter, several of his stupid friends standing nearby. "We got you something that we're sure you'll love!" He proclaimed, putting the silver platter down and taking the top off to reveal what laid on the dish beneath.

Gaz stared at it, eyes widening slowly, a slight bulge of a vein in her neck pulsating as she looked at a pig's head with an apple in it.

"It's a dead ringer for you, huh?" Torque added.

…and so it was that Torque had to be flown to the hospital, a silver platter forcibly stuffed into his ass, an apple forced into his jaws so hard he couldn't spit it out, butt naked and sobbing as Gaz was led away in a straightjacket, Professor Membrane quietly going along with her as he shook his head. "My poor, insane daughter."

Dib had watched and waited, sitting outside Gaz's cell for a solid three days. Finally she was deemed "well" enough to be released into her father's care. Her eyes were slightly bloodshot now, her body gaunt, her hair a mess as she was taken back home, Professor Membrane telling her that a few weeks off from school would do her good.

Normally Gaz would have loved to skip school. But she just remained silent.

And that night, Dib was woken from sound slumber and a dream about tying Zim to a set of railroad tracks by the sound of somebody…

…crying? In the bathroom next door?

And so that was how Dib found his sister sitting on the toilet, curled up in just a towel, head in her hands and the unmistakable remains of tears slinking down her cheeks. "Gaz…you alright?"

"…no. No I'm not. I'm fucking not, Dib. I am NOT alright." She muttered. "I keep having dreams about that dumb pig demon. I hear all those kids and teachers talking about me. They're all laughing at me. They're ALL laughing at me. I'm like "Carrie", Dib!" She grunted. "Only difference is people feel BAD for Carrie! At least she gets pity points! I got jack shit!" She mumbled.

Dib just nodded, and let her speak. She had clearly been holding this in for a long, long time.

"I'm not good at…this feeling stuff, okay? I don't like talking about how I feel or what I'm thinking. I really, really don't. I always thought it was stupid." She muttered. "I'm sure plenty of people find it comforting to talk to shrinks or psychologists or other folks about how they feel because their life genuinely sucks or someone they know is a jerk to them or a total idiot. But nothing I endure's worth talking about. It's just general shittiness that just builds up like a pile more and more, a little bit, every single day, every single hour. And since most people gotta deal with that crap on their own in real life, well, y'know what, I ain't gonna do anything different. Okay? THAT'S how I feel. It's not any big thing. It's just all this little stuff that adds up but it's all petty and stupid and it's not worth talking about. Even this stupid…pork crap isn't worth talking about. Oh no, I can only taste pork, so what? It's not like my dad's a drunk or my mom beats me or my gym teacher won't stop leering at me. I could have it way worse, so why bother talking about it? It's not worth it."

"But it's not…healthy. It's not…well…" Dib hesitated, and then bit the bullet. "Smart."

Gaz looked up at him, surprised.

"Gaz, your happiness is like a box that's open. If you don't close it, all your happiness it gonna just float out, bit by bit, one piece after another. The less you talk about how unhappy or miserable you are when you actually ARE miserable or unhappy, then the worse you get. Because you're not really helping yourself. It's like an atheist saying "there is no God" every single hour of the day. Doing that just keeps the idea of God in his mind. It's not helping him, not really, because he's not putting it out of his mind. You got issues…you face them, you talk about them, you get over them. With help, if you have to. That's how it works. Because most of the time, in fact, pretty much almost ALL the time, you can never do things on your own. Let alone dealing with how miserable you feel."

Gaz quietly looked back at her brother.

"We're social creatures." Dib said with a shrug. "That's just how it works. A problem shared is almost always a problem halved. I started feeling a lot better about my life going to our new guidance counselor. You'll feel better if you just talk about stuff that annoyed you or ticked you off to me. Even if its minor. That way, you're at least dealing with it, and not, like, taking a piece of dirty clothing and just stuffing it in a closet. Eventually the closet's gonna burst."

"…you know, you might be right." Gaz remarked. "Maybe."

"I'm not saying you have to, just…think about trying it." Dib offered. "Anyway, I'm gonna go get breakfast. Talk to you later. If you feel up for it."

With that, Dib left Gaz alone, and Gaz looked down at the floor tiles. She bit her lip, chewing on it slightly.

…

…

…

…about half an hour later, as Dib was finishing up his pancakes, Gaz slunk into the kitchen. "Pass the orange juice." She said, cringing a bit as Dib nodded, and handed her the carton of orange juice, and she poured herself a glass. She took a deep breath, then took a sip.

"…how's it taste?"

"…it doesn't really taste like much of anything." She remarked.

"…but no pork?"

"No pork."

Dib smiled. "We're making progress, then." He offered.

"Yeah." Gaz sighed. "…I guess we are."

And she surprised herself by smiling.


End file.
